Ashutosh Varshney is associate professor of political science at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor and director of its Center for South Asian Studies. His
most recent publication is
Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale
University Press, 2002), which will be released in paperback by Yale in April
2003. Research for the book was partly funded (1993-5) by the SSRC through its
MacArthur Program in International Security and Peace.

At 7:42 A.M. on February 27, 2002, Sabarmati Express pulled into the train
station of Godhra, a small town in the Western Indian state of Gujarat, ruled
by a Hindu nationalist government since 1995. What exactly happened at the
train station and soon thereafter remains trapped in different narratives. Some
details can, however, be reconstructed with sufficient assurance.

Sabarmati Express was carrying cadres (karsevaks) of the Hindu right
from Ayodhya, where they had gone to express their vigorous support for
building a Ram temple at a legally and politically disputed site.1 At
Godhra, apparently, an altercation took place between Hindu activists and some
Muslim boys serving tea at the train station.2 As the train began moving
after its scheduled stop at the station, the emergency cord was pulled. As a
result, the train stopped in a primarily Muslim neighborhood where, according
to credible press reports, it was attacked by a Muslim mob. Two carriages were
burned,3 and the firefighting efforts hampered. The fire killed 58
passengers, including many women and children.

A retaliatory bloodbath followed in many parts of the state. Hindu mobs torched
Muslim homes and businesses, killed Muslim men, women and children, and erased
mosques and graves. Instead of isolating those Muslim criminals who attacked
the train and punishing them legally, as any law-bound and civilized government
would do, the state government allowed revenge killings. Over a thousand lives,
possibly many more, were lost over the next few weeks. Over 100,000 Muslims
were pushed into the state’s ramshackle refugee camps, where basic amenities
were minimal and living conditions abysmal.

Hindu-Muslim riots are not uncommon in India, but Gujarat violence plumbed new
depths of horror and brutality and has come to acquire a double meaning. It was
a bruising embarrassment for anyone who believes in the pluralistic core of
Indian nationhood, a view enshrined in India’s constitution, a view that gives
an equal place to all religions in the country, privileging none.

Hindu nationalism, India’s Hindu right, reads Gujarat violence differently. It
believes in an India dominated by its majority community, the Hindus. All other
religions, it has always argued, must “assimilate” to India’s Hindu core,
accepting in effect that the Hindus are the architect of the Indian nation and
also its superior citizens. For Hindu nationalist ideologues, the anti-Muslim
violence was an ideological victory. In a formal resolution, the RSS, the
ideological and organizational centerpiece of Hindu nationalism, said: ‘‘Let
the minorities understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the
majority.’’4 Laws alone, the RSS implied, as it always has, cannot
protect India’s minorities.

Such views, of course, can be expressed in a democracy that protects free
speech. The crux of the matter lies elsewhere. Press reports make it plausible
to argue that the anti-Muslim retaliation was significantly abetted, if not
demonstrably sponsored, by the elected Hindu nationalist government of the
state. Were Gujarat killings pogroms, not riots? Has independent India had any
other pogroms before? And what are the implications of such violence for our
understanding of the role of the state in ethnic or communal riots? These are
the critical issues raised by Gujarat violence.

Riots or Pogroms?

In one respect, the violence in Gujarat followed a highly predictable pattern.
A recent time-series constructed on Hindu-Muslim violence had already
identified Gujarat as the worst state, much worse than the states of North
India often associated with awful Hindu-Muslim relations in popular
perceptions.5 It had also specified three Gujarat towns—Ahmedabad,
Vadodara and Godhra—as the most violence-prone: these three turned out to be
the worst sites of violence in March and April 2002. It was also argued that
the outbreaks of communal violence tend to be highly locally concentrated: many
towns, only a few miles away from the worst cities, have insulated themselves
from communal riots, entirely or substantially. In contrast to Ahmedabad,
Surat’s old city (not the part where its shantytowns are) was argued to be such
an example: yet again in March and April 2002, the violence in Surat was
minimal, even as Vadodara and Ahmedabad, neither too far away from Surat,
experienced carnage. Not everything about Gujarat violence was, however,
entirely predictable. In one respect, the violence was shockingly different.
Unless later research disconfirms the proposition, the existing press reports
give us every reason to conclude that the riots in Gujarat were the first
full-blooded pogrom in independent India.

According to dictionaries, a pogrom means:

“An organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a
minority group, especially one conducted against Jews.” (www.dictionary.com)

“A mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons
and property of a religious, racial, or national minority.”
(www.britannica.com)

Reports in almost all major newspapers of India, with the exception of the
vernacular press in Gujarat, show that at least in March, if not April, the
state not only made no attempt to stop the killings, but also condoned
them.6 That the government “officially encouraged” anti-Muslim
violence—something often believed—cannot be conclusively proved on the basis of
the evidence provided by newspaper reports, though later research may well
prove that. What is unquestionable is that the state condoned revenge killings.

The statements of non-governmental organizations most closely associated with
the state government are highly indicative. According to the chief of one such
organization, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a leading Hindu nationalist
body, Gujarat was “the first positive response of the Hindus to Muslim
fundamentalism in 1,000 years.”7 The reference here is to the original
historical arrival of Muslims from Central Asia and the Middle East to the
Indian subcontinent, a time when a long Hindu decline, say the Hindu
nationalists, also set in. On this reading, the rise of Muslims in Indian
history and the Hindu decline are integrally connected, the former causing the
latter, and a revenge for historical wrongs is necessary.

The Hindu right believes that its elected government did exactly what was
required: namely, allowing violent Hindu retaliation against the Muslims,
including those who had nothing to do with the mob that originally torched the
train. For others, of course, it is not the job of the government, whatever its
ideological persuasion, to stoke public anger, or to allow it to express itself
violently, regardless of the provocation. No elected government that has taken
an oath to protect the lives of its citizens can behave the way criminal gangs
do, thirsting for a tit-for-tat. This is why Gujarat killings have been a
source of bitter debate and intense agony in India.

It is sometimes suggested that the anti-Sikh violence in Delhi, after the
assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 30, 1984, was the first pogrom of
independent India. This argument is not plausible, for the differences are
critical. To illustrate the major differences, one can do no better than cite
from a most brilliant column written by a senior Indian journalist, who
personally covered the 1984 anti-Sikh riots:

First of all, the ordinary mass of the Hindus in Delhi never got involved in
the riots—many of us put on crash helmets, picked up hockey sticks and cricket
bats, wickets, anything at night to run vigils in our streets so no “outsiders”
could harm our Sikh neighbours. How many such stories have we heard from
Gujarat? Second, once the government got its act together (within 72 hours) all
rioting stopped, as if someone had blown the whistle and called off a game or a
movie show. Third, and this is the most important distinction, there was shame,
embarrassment, contrition, even fear on the faces of the top civil servants,
police officers, Congressmen. They knew something terrible had happened. Rajiv
Gandhi may have made his insensitive “when a tree falls earth shakes...”
statement to rationalise the killings, but damage control started immediately.

....[A]s the riots were dying out on November 3 (Mrs. Gandhi had been
assassinated on October 30) Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor, P.G. Gavai, was fired.
… The Station Head Officer (SHO) of Trilokpuri (police station) was removed on
November 2. The police commissioner, Subhash Tandon, was replaced on November
12. So were Deputy Commissioner of Police (east), under whose jurisdiction
Trilokpuri fell, Additional Police Commissioner (range), and Deputy
Commissioner of Police (south). Within a month or so they were all facing
departmental inquiries. Contrast this with what happened in Gujarat. Did any
policeman get removed or punished for non-performance or complicity? Narendra
Modi, on the other hand, moved out mainly those who had been effective, true
and loyal to the uniform....

The Congressmen whose names surfaced or were even popularly mentioned in
connection with the killings all paid the price. Political careers of H.K.L
Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar never recovered from the taint of 1984
although nobody was ever convicted.... Isn’t it a bit different now when
leading lights of the BJP go around talking of “Hindu consolidation,” of Modi
having become a “Hindutva hero” or the likely electoral dividend of the
killings?”8

The larger point should be clear. Because of their intense anti-Muslim ideology
and a Hindu conception of the nation, the leading Hindu nationalist
organizations, such as the VHP and RSS, have celebrated the anti-Muslim
violence as an act of nationalism. In contrast, the Congress party never
developed an anti-Sikh ideology. This should explain why the Congress ended up
developing an attitude of contrition, but the VHP, deeply intertwined with the
state government in Gujarat, found hacking and burning Muslims after the Godhra
provocation a celebratory and ideologically correct act. It is the latter which
makes Gujarat riots a clear pogrom. There is no contrition yet in the
statements of the Gujarat state government, or of leading Hindu nationalist
organizations. The anti-Sikh violence of 1984 was significantly different.

In the Gujarat government’s eyes, Muslims are disloyal and deserve to be
treated harshly, regardless of whether all Muslims were involved in, or
supported, the torching of train at Godhra. No distinction need be made between
Muslim criminals and innocent Muslim citizens. And the most powerful civil
society organizations—the VHP and RSS—are also of the same view. Instead of
civil society resisting the state, or the state resisting marauding civic
groups like the VHP, there was a coincidence between the two in March 2002. It
is this coincidence that created the ideal conditions for a pogrom.

Causes of Riots: Towards a Deeper Understanding

It is often said that if the state were communally neutral, or scrupulous
enough to protect the lives of all its citizens, there would be no large-scale
communal violence. This argument is true, but only trivially so. Moreover, it
does not advance our understanding of peace.

Whenever major communal violence has taken place in independent India,
academics, activists, legal experts and journalists have been intensely
critical of the state. All scholars as well as judicial inquiry commissions
instituted to investigate riots in independent India so far have focused on
riots and violent towns, not on towns that did not explode, even while other
cities were burning. Bulandshahar, next to Aligarh, and Saharanpur, next to
Meerut, have rarely been infected by the communal orgy of their neighboring
towns. If the researchers and judges only investigate violence, the failure of
state organs in preventing riots is bound to be a foregone conclusion. There is
no mystery to be unraveled here.

To understand riots better, we need, first of all, to compare systematically
the episodes of mass violence with episodes of peace. It is about the only way
scholars know of figuring out whether they are right about their understanding.
In the absence of such comparisons, we can’t convincingly answer a fundamental
question: how do we know we are right?

The logic underlying this proposition is simple, often misunderstood, and worth
restating.9 Suppose on the basis of commonalities, we find that
inter-ethnic economic rivalry (a), polarized party politics (b), and segregated
neighborhoods (c) explain ethnic violence (X). Can we, however, be sure that
our judgments are right? What if (a), (b) and (c) also exist in peaceful cases
(Y)? In that case, either violence is caused by the intensity of (a), (b) and
(c) in (X); or, there is an underlying factor or the context that makes (a),
(b) and (c) result in violence in one case but not in the other; or, most
intriguingly, there is yet another factor (d), which differentiates peace from
violence. It will, however, be a factor that we did not discover precisely
because peaceful cases were not studied with the violent ones.

Following this method, it can be demonstrated that dreadful though it is,
Hindu-Muslim violence is neither endemic nor widespread in India.10
Rioting is heavily concentrated in a handful of cities and towns. In thousands
of villages and towns, Hindus and Muslims manage to live together. There may be
tensions and small clashes, but they do not degenerate into riots. Since
horrific acts of rioting make news and quiet conduct of everyday life does not,
we get a distorted picture of the extent of violence and killings.

The share of villages in communal rioting has been miniscule. Between 1950-95,
rural India, where more than two-thirds of Indians live, accounted for a mere 4
percent of all deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots. Such rioting is primarily an urban
phenomenon. Moreover, within urban India itself, eight cities accounted for
about 46 per cent of all deaths. These riot-prone cities have less than a fifth
of India’s urban population and a mere 6 per cent of the country’s total
population, urban as well as rural.

What explains these local concentrations of communal violence? Based on a
comparison of six Indian cities, three riot-prone and three entirely or mostly
peaceful, my book (see endnote 5) argues that the pre-existing local
institutions of civic engagement—political parties; business associations;
trade unions; professional associations of teachers, students and lawyers;
NGOs; reading and film clubs, especially if they are mass-based, as in South
India—explain why some towns remain peaceful, while others go up in flames.

Periodically, provocative events do take place. Such events can be likened to
“sparks.” Where Hindus and Muslims are integrated in local civic organizations,
sparks get extinguished. In towns where Hindus and Muslims are segregated and
no common civic sites exist, sparks can easily turn into conflagrations,
consuming tens and hundreds of lives. This was as true in March and April of
2002 as it has been for many decades, including during partition,
unquestionably the worst period of Hindu-Muslim violence.

Such local concentrations of violence suggest that despite the Hindu
nationalist claims about Muslim attacks on Hindu culture in the past, only some
Hindus, and only some places, allow such perceived “historical and national
wrongs” to undermine the political, economic and social links between
communities. Privately, they may well have anti-Muslim feelings, but such
feelings are not allowed to turn into violence.

Since independence, only two regions of India—the North and the West—have had
repeated rioting and, within these regions, only some cities and towns. Despite
having a substantial Muslim population, southern India, with the major
exception of the city of Hyderabad, has had remarkably low levels of
Hindu-Muslim violence. The same is true of eastern India over the last few
decades. Hindu-Muslim divisions, the cornerstone of Hindu nationalism, have not
been a central feature of the politics of the South and the East. Scholars have
tended to draw too many unacceptable generalizations from the North or the West
about the whole country. In most parts of India, the relationships of Hindus
and Muslims are so extensive—often in organizations and associations—that the
Hindu nationalist dream of a nationwide Hindu-Muslim cleavage, from which they
would politically benefit, is most unlikely to become a reality.

What is a Better Bet for Peace: The State or Civil Society?

Given the arguments above, how should we conceptualize the role of the state in
moments of communal violence?11 After more than 50 years of experience
with state behavior during Hindu-Muslim riots, we should revise our view of
what the state does in such moments, why it does so, and how to make the state
behave better.

Here are four proposals:

First, on the major fault-lines of a polity, as Hindu-Muslim relations are in
India, the state tends to act in a politically strategic, not a legally
correct, manner. This is true in much of the world. Consider the Sri Lankan
state on Sinhalese-Tamil relations, the Malaysian state on Malay-Chinese
relations, and the US on race relations, though the US is beginning to come out
of its racial bind. States should not act in this manner, but they do,
combining legality, morality and political calculations in an unpredictable
way. The state in Gujarat acted in a primarily strategic, not a legally
correct, manner.

Secondly, this more realistic understanding of how states function neither
means that citizens should cease to criticize and pressure the state when it
fails to protect lives in riots, nor that they should stop trying every
constitutional means of punishing the state. But, while making every attempt to
put pressure on the state, they should not bet on it to rectify its behavior
any time soon. If, as a result of such criticism and pressure, the state
corrects itself on major fault-lines, it should be viewed as a happy low-odds
outcome of citizen activism.

Thirdly, working on, and building, integrated civic networks is a better bet.
Towns where Hindus and Muslims continue to be integrated—in businesses,
political parties, unions, professional associations of lawyers, teachers,
doctors and students, and clubs—are also towns where riots remain either absent
or rare. An integrated organizational and civic life makes the state behave
much better than intellectual and political exhortations that it do so. This
remains one of the more important findings of my study.

Finally, it follows that citizen action has to take two forms: (a) while
continuing to pressure the state for its dereliction of constitutional duty, it
should (b) focus on building integrated civic structures. The first has been
the primary strategy for citizen action, in India and elsewhere, thus far. Such
action is necessary, but not sufficient. Citizen initiatives should follow a
two-track strategy, combining (a) and (b). The state, otherwise, will continue
to get away with its utter misconduct and gross disrespect for human lives
during ethnic riots.

Endnotes

1
A Muslim mosque once stood at this site; Hindu militants razed it in December
1992.

2
It is believed in some quarters that the abducting of a young woman by Hindu
militants traveling in the train triggered the attack on the train. Careful
analysis shows that this story is simply wrong. For the most conclusive
refutation of the story, see Prem Shankar Jha, “The Mystery Email,”
Outlook (Delhi), March 25, 2002.

3
While initial reports indicated the flame came from the outside, forensic
evidence indicates strongly that the fire began within. The Gujarat Forensic
Science Lab (FSL) found that at least 60 liters of petrol were inside the
carriage before the fire was set. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing individuals
carrying jerry cans filled with petrol enter the train.

4
“Majority’s Goodwill Vital: RSS,” The Times of India, March 26, 2002.
Born in the 1920s, RSS stands for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National
Volunteer Corp). It is the parent organization of all Hindu nationalist
organizations, including the political party, BJP, which at the time of this
writing has ruled the state of Gujarat since 1995 and has ruled Delhi in a
multi-party coalition since 1998.

5
Constructed jointly by Steven Wilkinson (Duke University) and me for the period
1950-95, the basic statistical results of the dataset, summarized below, are
reported in Ch. 4 of my Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims
in India (Yale University Press, 2002).

6
This is based on a close reading of the following newspapers: The Times of
India; The Indian Express; The Hindustan Times.

7
“Parivar Wars,” The Times of India, June 26, 2002. VHP stands for the
Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council).

8
Shekhar Gupta, “Pot is Blacker than the Kettle,” The Indian Express,
April 6, 2002.

9
For an elaborate argument for the need for variance in social science research,
see Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sydney Verba, Designing Social
Inquiry (Princeton University Press, 1993). For why discovering
commonalities may matter even in a world where variance exists, see Ronald
Rogowski, Symposium on “Designing Social Inquiry,” American Political
Science Review, 89 (June 1995).

10
These observations and the figures below are based on Chapter 4 of my book.

11
I first presented these arguments in an article, “Making the State Behave, and
Well,” The Indian Express, April 23, 2002.